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TX Bans Local Nurses from Quitting to Work FEMA Crisis Contracts in State
- voakbasda 5y agoMy girlfriend got an associates degree last year in the hope of going to nursing school. However, she was actively dissuaded from even applying. It seems that competition for spots is so fierce that students with straight A’s may not get into the programs in the area. Some students retake critical classes three or four times to get enough “points” to compete. So the shortage is entirely caused by academia and industry. Thank you, regulatory capture. They don’t want more nurses.
- BreakfastB0b 5y ago“Small government”
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- klyrs 5y agoI was thinking "Liberty." With vaccine mandates banned, I don't expect out-of-state nurses to clamor for this opportunity...
- treeman79 5y agoLot of fired nurses around the country looking for work…
- meepmorp 5y ago>99% of nursing jobs survived, though
- vkou 5y agoAnd by lots, you mean 'lots' of nurses that complained about mandates, stalled until the last minute before turning their papers in, but when push came to shove, got vaccinated. The police here are doing the same. I was hoping that, as reported frequently and loudly in the news, ~1/3rd of the department would get fired over the mandate, but as the deadline looms, it doesn't look like more than a handful will be. ... Also, because they'd be working for the federal government, they wouldn't be allowed to work those FEMA jobs without proof of vaccination.
- belltaco 5y agoLike not allowing Tesla to sell cars without going through a money grubbing annoying dealership.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoOr legal marijuana.
- readthenotes1 5y agoSmall federal government. For some reason (1), small State government seems to be a entirely different concept. (1)I'm guessing the bribe money is better that way
- Mountain_Skies 5y agoOr people simply prefer government that's closer to them.
- CameronNemo 5y agoWhile I think that is definitely true, states like Florida have forced local school districts on certain issues recently. So it is not even consistent on that level.
- freedomben 5y agoAs a person who has lived in many red states, this is generally how it is for some reason. Many people here actually get mad when I point it out, but after giving half a dozen good examples it's hard for them to deny it. FTR I'm not taking a position on small vs. big government, I'm just sensitive to and OCD about pointing out hypocrisy when I see it.
- vkou 5y agoGiven how little Texas legislators get paid, I don't think you can make a living as one without supplementing your income with them. The cashier at Chick-Fil-A takes home more than you do.
- anomie31 5y agoI'm so confused, I really thought Texas had at-will employment?
- mfer 5y agoSome context… due to nursing shortages, many places are giving great bonuses and pay rates to new people and temporary help. Those who stay aren’t being compensated the same. This is leading to a lot of people changing jobs. Sometimes to work down the street. There is far more demand for nurses than there is supply.
- hexxagone 5y agoIsn't it how free markets work ?
- burnished 5y agoNot in Texas!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- SQL2219 5y agonursing wage arbitrage.
- hindsightbias 5y agoAs long as “free” means you can’t partake because you already work in the state.
- giantg2 5y agoSounds like software developer markets (and others) right now.
- ashtonkem 5y agoIt’s funny how selective free market thinkers can be on these things.
- dantheman 5y agoIn general that's how free markets work, but medicine is definitely not a free market and FEMA isn't a customer.
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- lugged 5y agoAwful title. They're saying stimulus money must be used to secure out of state hires because they don't have enough nurses in state. Hiring from the existing pool doesn't create a net improvement on the total nurses in state so they're saying you can't be hired with this money if you currently or recently worked for hospitals in state. Nothing to do with banning quitting.
- klyrs 5y agoThe article does mention that. Also mentions that nurses are significantly underpaid and quitting in droves. Raising pay to compensate the existing nurses would reduce this churn, but they'd rather keep local wages down and let non-resident nurses get the federal funding.
- jws 5y agoIt might be reasonable to say the state stimulus money must be used to import nurses, but using the federal stimulus money to raid nurses from the other states seems morally dubious.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Dylan16807 5y ago> Nothing to do with banning quitting. You're not supposed to cut the sentence in half! You can quit in general, but not to move to these jobs. The full action of "quit X to get job Y" is banned.
- mike_d 5y agoAccording to Indeed, the average wage for an RN in Texas is $35.82. The new contracts pay $100/hr and $150/hr for overtime. According to the staffing agency you have to have not been employed by a hospital in Texas for the last 30 days. for an almost 3x wage bump I'd be shocked if some nurses didn't decide to sit on the sidelines for a month.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoOr quit, work a traveling nurse contract out of state for a month, and then come back on contract. A nurse friend quit the VA and is making $10k/week traveling.
- bluedino 5y agoMy brother in law is a traveling nurse, he has shown me the 10k/week jobs in Alaska but the others seem to be 4-6k
- giantg2 5y agoI'll gladly take $4k per week.
- Mountain_Skies 5y agoWages are increasing rapidly as everyone is outbidding each other for the very limited number of travel nurses in a labor market that suddenly has a large amount of new vacancies.
- LurkingPenguin 5y agoHow is this sustainable? Is the shortage of nurses a temporary, short-term issue or are there structural problems in the market? If there is a longer-term problem, how will it affect healthcare costs and the quality of patient care? While I generally understand the value of travel nurses and the role they have historically played in the market, if I was a healthcare consumer in the US, I'd be pretty disconcerted if I knew that the healthcare systems I relied on were so desperate for nurses that they were offering travel nurses $10,000/week.
- SQL2219 5y agoA lot of this "shortage" can be attributed to the firing of nurses who refuse the vaccine, which will probably only increase in the next few months.
- meepmorp 5y ago>99% of nursing jobs survived the mandates, though
- JaimeThompson 5y agoCan you provide sources that support your position?
- SQL2219 5y ago1,400 workers cut loose from Northwell Health https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/northwell-health-cuts-2-25-of-its-workforce-that-refused-to-comply-with-covid-19-mandate/ar-AAP8xXZ https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/northwell-health-cuts-2-25...
- csense 5y agoHow exactly do you ban someone from quitting their job? Like, if they don't want to do it anymore, how do you prevent them from just not showing up, or showing up and sitting around and refusing to do anything work related? Also, isn't a job you're not allowed to quit basically a form of slave labor?
- CamperBob2 5y agoThat's the "libertarian"-influenced Republican government in Texas at work. Small government... small enough to fit into your bedroom, your doctor's office, and your workplace.
- detaro 5y agoIt's clearly about banning them from taking up specific new jobs if they already work(ed) in Texas, so they don't have a motivation to quit an existing to job to switch to those, not literally banning them from quitting.
- comex 5y agoIf you read the article, what's banned is working FEMA contracts if you recently (in the last 30 days) quit from a Texas hospital, or are a Texas resident. Nobody is literally banned from quitting.
- wink 5y agoIn defense of the person you replied to, it's so littered with acronyms and things I've never heard of (I'm not from the US) I was only 80% sure I understood it correctly.
- magwa101 5y agoFor the "live free" state they sure do take away a lot of freedoms.
- chroem- 5y agoCan you provide sources that support your position?
- otterley 5y agoTexas keeps trying to ban abortion every which way it can. It is also trying to make voting more difficult instead of more convenient. This has been all over the news in the past year; sources aren't needed to support well-known facts.
- chroem- 5y agoI'm sorry, but I'm going to need more than anecdata.
- cultofmetatron 5y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_yE9epsAdg&ab_channel=ABCNews https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_yE9epsAdg&ab_channel=ABCNe... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-MDvUnL6P0&ab_channel=KCENNews https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-MDvUnL6P0&ab_channel=KCENN... I spent literally 10 seconds googling this.
- dylan604 5y agoa search engine is your friend especially for something as easy to find like this. save your requests for someone to provide links for the much more difficult to locate (much more supsect).
- salawat 5y agoThat's New Hampshire. Common mistake. Texas' state motto is "Friendship". In Texas, Friends are people there when you need them, and politely distant, minding their own business when you don't. Whom "you need" is referring to there is a perennial topic of conversation, and is generally a reliable seed of spirited dialectic.
- burnished 5y ago>>“This surge is nothing like anything we’ve ever seen,” the THA said. “Hospitals are doing everything in their power to figure this out. Staffing is a critical issue and this spike is unsustainable without help. Many hospitals have already idled non-essential services and are offering bonuses and incentive pay just to keep staff.” THA is Texas Hospital Association. It is kind of absurd reading this because the nation as a whole has been short on nurses for years and its been well forecasted as a problem for some time. Add on top of it a pandemic that is treated as a political problem, at this point a very clear problem with burnout and working conditions, and this little piece of fluff just becomes absurd.
- Gigachad 5y agoWhy would you bother planning ahead when you can just have the government change the rules of the game after you sit on your ass and pocket the savings for a year.
- giantg2 5y agoIsn't the government supposed to be the one preventing anticompetitive behavior?
- sanp 5y agoI thought Texas was all about individual choice / responsibility. /s.
- soylentnewsorg 5y ago[flagged]
- theonemind 5y agoLast I checked, Texas gets back about 92 cents for every dollar it sends to the Federal level, so even if the state "is about getting as much federal money as possible", Texas loses money to the Federal government. I say that as someone that generally finds the state reprehensible, but facts are facts.
- pm90 5y agoThe majority of Red States don’t.
- soylentnewsorg 5y agoThe majority of red states are welfare states. The majority of blue states are too. There are only 11 states that pay for All federal expenditures. What is even more interesting is that internal to the red states, their blue areas pay almost all the state income taxes, and while having a higher population get less votes for state officials. Because once those people are in power, they commit election fraud in every election from that point on. looking at pictures of the district lines in red states is hilarious.
- da_big_ghey 5y agoCant believe unsubstantial lies on election fraud are now in HN also. I demand sources.
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- Herodotus38 5y agoI would point out that this article is from August 2021, which is not that long ago, but in the realm of COVID news, is actually significant.
- denkmoon 5y agoIncredible how quickly legislation can be enacted when it involves limiting workers options and opportunities.
- dylan604 5y agoWhere is it the government's purview to say that a person can or cannot work somewhere? If the employer says they have the skills required to fulfill the position, where does the gov't come into play?
- xref 5y agoWell Reagan breaking the air traffic controllers union in 1981 because it was “a peril to safety” is a famous example of the government saying when and where you have to work https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Controllers_Organization_(1968) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Con...
- dylan604 5y agoIt was just as moronic then as it is now. Also, I don't believe these are even close to being the same. ATC works for FAA which is a gov't organization. Healthcare, as we all know in the US, is not a gov't organization. Gov't telling private citizens which private companies they can/cannot work for is asinine.